Frost and Fire
by Makaria Lee
Summary: Ian can't believe the galaxy he lives in. Sure, being the prince and eventual emperor has its perks, but at the expense of having the mother he has? Not only is she an awful ruler, she's gone and kidnapped Ian's best friend and his fiancée. The only way Ian can get them back is if he brings the Princess Amalienne - Princess of the Origin Planet - to his mother. / Sci-Fi AU
1. In Which Our Story Begins

"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down." - Ray Bradbury

Commander Ian Kabra, as his English name proclaimed him, was not happy.

He was raised on Earth, meant to become its ruler once his mother and father passed the crown onto he and his sister. He was raised in England, traveled around the continents, and learned all of the languages just so the humans wouldn't complain about him being their ruler like they complained about his mother. He made them like him, did charity work and helped the poor, but it seems to have been all for naught.

Some dumbass scientist in the Halo Region of the "Milky Way" (as the humans called it, Ian thought it was awfully silly) had managed to invent and perfect a machine that defied death. A regeneration machine. Ian had read that it took a week in the chamber to turn from near death to young adult, but that wouldn't stop his mother.

His mother would use and abuse that machine to stay in power, she would make sure no one else would get their hands on it and she would make sure her reign continued until the end of fucking time.

Honestly, with a galactic empress like Isabel, only an idiot would make a machine like that. Hell, Ian was her goddamn son and he hated her. Planned a coup when he was fifteen that never met fruition (it would've worked though, believe you me). Now Isabel would get to oppress forever, just what she loved most.

Ian would be stuck a prince for the rest of his fucking life, not exactly the fate he planned himself to have. Ian was meant to rule, was born to rule. It was literally in his blood, being from the royal family of Nahash. He was raised with conquest games, his father taught him how to get his subjects to like him. He whole life was built on the notion that he would someday rule - even his wife was picked out for him because of their compatibility as rulers! He was the perfect emperor, if it weren't for the fact that he would evidently never be one.

He sort of felt like going into the pond, where Cécile usually was, and just sulk. She wouldn't give him attention, he wasn't an attention whore like his sister, he just liked being around her. For an arranged marriage, they did get along quite well.

Well, whenever Cécile wasn't throwing various breakable objects at him.

He walked down the halls of his mansion, his jacket fluttering behind him like a cape. If his servants couldn't tell he was angry, they needed to be fired.

He thrust open the doors to Cécile's pond, causing them to hit the walls with a loud bang.

Cécile's human handmaiden, her best friend, looked up from her position. Elizabeth Cooper was not a special human - she'd lost most of her family in a war long ago, all she had left was her brother (who also served Ian's family). She was simply born, that was her most amazing accomplishment before she became a servant to the Kabra family. Ian was out with Cécile when they saw her and his fiancée demanded Ian take the shivering girl into his home. Honestly, if he wasn't betrothed to Cécile...

Elizabeth came over to Ian, her bare feet slapping against the marble flooring. She held out to him a platter of food, trinkets of Cécile's home world. Ian declined it - Atargatian delicacies didn't agree with him. Anything that lived or grew in some kind of ocean or sea or body of liquid didn't agree with him, really. Not even the plants from the small mercury ocean on his planet - infamously expensive and mouth watering cuisine that was reserved only for visiting royalty - made him want to throw the contents of his stomach up.

She asked him what was the matter, and he told her that she may stay but she must close the doors. He trusted Elizabeth, she and her brother were both kind people.

Ian walked over to the pond, the little body of water that his fiancée called home. Honestly, he wasn't certain how reproduction would work between them - being from different species, even if they were from the same solar system, did not guarantee that they would be able to produce children together. Ian used to tell himself that if Vikratali I could, then he could too. He didn't want to think of what would happen if they couldn't create an heir.

(Of course, Vikratali I had children with a Clousarian, the supposed Origin Race. Rumor had it they could reproduce with any species, but Ian wouldn't let that get to him. He and Cécile needed to find someway to carry on the line.)

Cécile surfaced, bringing a mouthful of water with her. She took careful aim and shot Ian's midsection with a small stream.

He sighed. "Very funny." He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, throwing it on the ground to dry in a crumpled mess. Cécile offered him a smile and slaped her tail on the water.

"What is the matter?" Cécile hadn't been living on Earth very long - Cécile wasn't even her real name, it was sort of a butchered translation of her name - so her accent was thick. It wasn't an accent so much as a way of speaking, her vocal chords were vastly different and she was used to her people's clicks and taps and gestures for communication. Earthen languages were new to her, but she got along fantastically well in communication with mathematics.

Ian sat in front of the girl, Elizabeth taking a place next to him. "Some idiot made a mechanical fountain of youth."

Cécile's forehead creased. "How is that bad?" She reached up and stroked his face. "You can be pretty forever."

Ian rolled his eyes. "It means Isabel can be young forever, too." Cécile sank back into her water, stopping just before her eyes went under.

"She'll rule forever," Elizabeth murmured. "Until someone kills her, she'll rule over us forever."

"Exactly."

Cécile sunk, blowing out little bubbles of air before swimming to the bottom. She tended to do that when she was upset. Ian assumed she wanted to be empress as much as he wanted to be emperor. That, or she was upset that she wasted so much time that she could've been spending with her mother.

Elizabeth let her legs dangle in the water, bringing her dress up so as to not get the hem wet. Ian sighed before lying down on his stomach, letting his hand trace patterns onto the water. Cécile continued to reflect at the bottom.

"She can hold her breath for 30 minutes now." Elizabeth murmured. "She's been practicing. Hasn't had much else to do."

True enough. Despite the planet being mostly water, it was hard for a sea creature like Cécile to get around. Most of the so-called intelligent life was on land, and it wasn't like Cécile could magically grow legs when her tail was dry or something idiotic like that.

Ian drug himself towards the edge of the pool and slipped in. He used the side of the pool to thrust himself down towards the sulky girl at the bottom.

He was used to swimming, loved to swim. He was built to swim, literally. He had webbing between his fingers, between his toes. He had gills that were used to convert the water in oxygen to breathable oxygen. They were weak, he didn't swim as often as his ancestors, and they would probably leave soon on the evolutionary chain (his cousin Ekrinian told him that his son Vrisini had been born without gills, though Ian had yet to see the child) but he had them and he could make use of them. Using the gills was as natural as breathing regularly, once you comfortable with being in the water.

He swam circles around Cécile, talking to her through the clicks of her homeworld.

She asked him, as she completely ignored his question, to bring her something to eat. Ian sighed to himself and kicked off the bottom and raced to the surface.

He swam over to Elizabeth to gather the plate of food, but Elizabeth was gone.

The plate of food she had been carrying was on the floor, bits of fish and water plants were strewn about the floor. The plate itself had a dent in it, as if it had been used as a shield.

He swam back down to Cécile and relayed the news.

He shook himself like a dog once he came out, cursing himself for not taking his pants off before diving in. At least his shirt was semidry, since he had taken that off. He walked towards the doors, which were cracked open. Someone had come in and taken Elizabeth. He turned around to tell Cécile to stay put, but the thrashing of the water told him someone had beaten him to it.

Ian Kabra turned around and was face-to-face with his mother.

Well, a hologram of his mother.

She didn't greet him, didn't smile at him, her face wasn't even warm. She was cold, calculating. It was the look she gave to the general from Gleise who stole 389 of her ships and destroyed the last 11.

"I heard you were planning a coup, son."

He could see through the hologram, suited men were trying to drag Cécile out of her water. She screamed, cursed at them, until they gagged her.

Ian ran towards her, but more of his mother's guards blocked the path.

"Let her go!" Ian screamed. "She has nothing to do with this!"

She frowned, then said in their native tongue. "Let's not speak that horrendous language, dear." Ian would have spat in her face if he could have. Not because he had any particular liking towards the English language, but just because she was ordering her guards to kidnap his fiancée and her best friend.

"Now," the hologram slowly walked a circle around Ian. "What's this coup about?"

"That was seven years ago, mother," he swallowed his pride, "when I was young and foolish and power hungry."

The hologram crackled as Isabel reached her hand out to touch Ian's shoulder. "Oh, but aren't you still? So upset about the youth machine." She offered a snakish smile. "That news was fake, dear. Meant to see how you would react."

If course she would have. He should have suspected it from the start. She'd probably placed microphones on him, cameras. She's probably heard him cursing around his study, breaking his mirror and ripping her picture off of his wall.

It had been a giant hissyfit, and she had probably seen and heard all of it.

She reached out and cupped his cheek, the hologram hissed again. "Now, son, if you want your little friends back, you're going to have to do me some favors."

He almost flared his nostrils, but he knew that would only serve to further anger his mother. "What do you want?"

Her lips seemed to touch her ears, giving off a terrifying grin that spelled trouble. "I want the Clousarian princess, Amalienne." Her grin turned into a look of exasperation. "She's next in line, and she's the only one with enough power to stop me."

"The Queen-"

"Is ill, I'm afraid." She gave a small smirk, showing a few of her sharp fangs. "She won't be leaving her bed... ever again."

Ian clenched his fists. His mother had poisoned the queen of the Origin Planet, the place where everything supposedly started. It was supposed to be a sacred place, a sacred people. They were the only people above Isabel in the galaxy, the only people she wasn't allowed to touch. And she'd gone an breached that, the most sacred law.

Isabel scoffed. "Oh, don't give me that look. We all know their origin story is a fake."

"The law said-"

"I am the law!" The hologram reached out to slap him. It didn't connect of course, but Ian flinched nevertheless. He even reached up to touch his cheek, though it didn't sting. "Do as I saw, boy, or you will never rule this galaxy."

Ian's mother and her guards left, taking Elizabeth and Cécile with them.

He stayed in the pond room for a while, thinking over what had just happened. He knew what was right, what he should do. But Cécile and Elizabeth were in danger, and they could die if he did the right thing.

All in all, there was only one thing Ian could do.


	2. In Which Amalienne Does Not Wish To Wed

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things. - Ray Bradbury

Princess Amalienne Jamarian Lunisca Arthopia III was just as unhappy as Ian Kabra, though more sad than frustrated.

Her mother, the Queen Hopia, continued to get worse and worse. Her doctors never said directly, but Amalienne was almost certain that her mother was going to die. It was in her father's eyes, the sadness and the sorrow that came when Hopia lost the ability to speak. It was in her brother's stance, how his shoulders slumped and his legs limped once Hopia had been unable to open her eyes.

It was in the kingdom, in the planet. The skies were gloomy, the people were gloomy. They started to wear green, the royal family's color, in preparation for mourning.

Amalienne's father began pressing for her to get married, and that was when Amalienne knew all hope was lost for her mother.

Clousa couldn't be ruled without a pair, and Arthur couldn't remarry. Amalienne getting married was the only possible solution, unless Hopia magically got better.

It wasn't as though she wasn't ready to rule, she'd been raised to rule and her people loved her. It was just that she didn't want to right now. She'd have to marry one of the princes on her planet because of the rush, and she didn't really like any of the princes on her planet. Evanot was kind, but he didn't seem like the ruling type. And Jacabi... He was smart, and beautiful... But he just didn't seem right.

But she would probably end up with Jacabi anyway.

Especially since they were currently holding a small party to unite the two royalties.

She was standing with Jacabi off to the side, Amalienne was never one for attention. They were supposed to be talking, bonding, trying to find out if they would make a good ruling couple. Instead, they were speaking of their younger siblings.

"It's so nice," Amalienne said, "that you love your brother as much as you do. Most people on this planet would probably hate him, if they knew the truth."

Atticus, the younger brother being spoken of, was illegitimate. Born after Marcus's first wife died, he should have never existed. No one knew his mother, save Marcus, but it probably should have stayed that way. Marcus had announced that they'd adopted the boy, found him on the streets of some city on the dark side and decided to take him in. That was the only way to keep the boy safe, because of how infidelity (even after the death of one's spouse) was traditionally seen.

"It's a ridiculous law," Jacabi said, "but changing the law takes far too long."

"Another ridiculous law," the two teens shared a laugh.

"When we rule," Jacabi whispered to her, "we'll change those laws."

Amalienne frowned. Jacabi didn't seem like a proper ruler, not how she was raised. He spoke of revenge, wanting to conquer the planets that had wronged them in the past, wanting to be rid of the darker emperors for good. She didn't like that, she didn't like revenge. Clousa was supposed to be built on justice, not vengeance.

She went to bed that night wondering what her future would bring her, and if she really wanted it.

Amalienne received the message from Ian Kabra at approximately 36:89 pm, just before she drifted off.

* * *

Ian Kabra's ship was en route to Clousa and would arrive in approximately 39 hours. He had no idea how they were going to take Amalienne without anyone noticing, but Ian Kabra had accomplished the unknown before.

Plus, he had his little sister with him. His little sister could convince anyone to go anywhere.

The little sister in question was currently playing with the war map's figurines - Ian didn't really care, they rarely used the thing and it was obvious that Natalie was bored out of her mind. He himself was damn close to cryogenically freezing himself to save time, but it would be a waste considering it's only a few more hours and he still hasn't figured out how to take Amalienne.

Natalie took the figure of Toxxin - that odd planet with the awful government - and spun it around the map. It landed on the other side of the galaxy, near a red giant star. The map's simulation feature kicked in and displayed in an array of wonder how Toxxin would burn to ashes in the location.

Ian took the figure and set it far away, far from any star. "Watch this."

Natalie's eyes opened in wonder as the simulation showed Toxxin freezing, zooming in on it's people slowing dying off.

"Can it show us anything?"

"Sadly no," Ian tossed Toxxin in the air a few times before placing it back where it belonged. "It can't show us how to take Amalienne."

Natalie rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant."

Ian shrugged. "It's what we need right now."

She took Nahash, their home planet that they'd only been to twice, and placed it where Clousa was. Life on Nahash ceased to exist, Clousa's sun was too far away and not near strong enough. Natalie sighed dramatically before placing the planets back where they belonged.

"Did mother give you a deadline?"

"No, she just said to bring Amalienne to her."

"Why shouldn't we just kill her ourselves? That's all Mummy's going to do."

"Mum likes to torture, you know that."

Natalie zoomed into Clousa and took Amalienne's figure into her hands. "Poor girl. She's probably worried about who she's going to marry, with her mother being so ill.

"Hey!" Natalie moved over to Earth and took Ian's figure, placing it next to Amalienne's. "Maybe Mummy wants to marry the two of you!"

Ian's face scrunched up for a moment. "She's got me engaged to Cécile."

"That was before Hopia fell ill." She made the two figures dance. "Think about it, if you marry Amalienne, you'll become the King of Clousa - or War Leader, whatever they call it. Mum will have the entire galaxy in the palm of her hand." She brought the figured together in a small kiss.

Ian had to admit, that plan made sense. His mother certainly wanted the power enough. She'd already gone and poisoned the queen, why not break a few more laws along the way? She would have Clousa, have total control over this galaxy. Then she would move to the next, then the next, until she had the entire universe in her grasp.

* * *

Jacabi walked through the halls of the Clousarian Capitol Palace, wondering what in the name of the Creator he did to upset Amalienne. She'd left the party earlier, claiming she was far too tired. It was easily noticeable that she was upset, however, and Jacabi was the last person she had spoken with directly. It couldn't have been something he'd said, she was laughing and smiling and agreeing with him all through the night. Perhaps it was a gesture? His breath? His attire? All of it seemed unlikely - he was the first born prince of the richest country in Clousa, how could he be anything short of perfect? - but something he'd done had obviously upset his fiancé.

Well, soon-to-be-fiancé, if what his father had told him was true.

Jacabi had been promised the hand of the princess, being the first born out of all the other first born princes. He was basically a god, his father had told him, among the first borns of Clousa.

Of course, saying such a thing was sacrilege, seeing as they already had a god of first borns. His father was joking of course, just playing up his son's importance (Jacabi hoped that Wila understood that as well).

He decided he needed to speak with Amalienne, fix whatever he'd done and make sure they had a nice, happy reign and marriage.

Marriage and reign.

It wasn't that he didn't love Amalienne, it was that they had just met barely a week ago. The whole party was basically just to get the two of them to like each other and make sure they were compatible. Jacabi had really liked Amalienne, she was smart and beautiful and knew how to hold a proper conversation with him. He did love her, he decided, even if was considered rushed by others. The moment he saw her walk towards him, her eyes knowing and her beautiful red hair piled on her head, he knew he loved her. Even if they had only know each other for a short time, Jacabi knew he loved her and all she came with.

But mostly her.

Jacabi took a deep breath and knocked on Amalienne's door. She didn't open it.

She's just regenerating her energy, he told himself, I'll speak with her in the morning.

He didn't move from his spot, far too nervous to leave for whatever reason.

Without really wanting to, he raised his hand to knock once more. Amalienne still did not answer.

This time, he found the courage to turn and leave.

* * *

They arrived on Clousa at the designated time, docking in the standard interport, passing through various tests, and eventually forcing their way in with their royal status. If there one thing Clousa loved more than their religion, it was royalty.

Ian and Natalie agreed that the best plan of action would be to simply convince Amalienne that it was for the best. In the worst possible situation, they would have to kidnap her. No big deal really, nothing they hadn't done before.

They requested a presence with the princess, they were told that they would have to wait a few hours. No big deal, Ian enjoyed the Clousarian markets. So full of wonderful things that made him want to vomit.

They had far too much seafood for a planet with only 42% ocean surface.

They met Amalienne soon after Natalie had finished purchasing many pieces of supposedly genuine Clousarian diamonds, relatives of Hissarina I's necklace! How wonderful that his sister was too attracted to shiny gems to realize that she was being ripped off!

They explained their situation to Amalienne, and to their surprise, she agreed entirely.

"Anything to get away from this marriage."

Amalienne was a rare breed of Clousarian. Her white eyes - no distinguishable iris or pupil - were a sign amongst her people that she was supposed to bring the next golden age with her rule. Her red hair - which had never occurred in any Clousarian race before their royalty began to breed with other races - was so long that it had to be piled on the top of her hair so that she wouldn't trip on it. Clousarians usually relished such long hair, it was seen as a sign of power, but Ian could tell that she wanted nothing more than to cut it down to the roots. Her skin held freckles, another rare feature of the Origin Race. She was all the impossibilities of her race thrown into one being.

It was annoying.

Ian was a standard of his race. Sure, he was much more handsome than a majority of the males of his people, but he didn't hold any special features that were rare amongst his species. The most distinguishable thing about him was probably his status and his intellect.

"You'll just come with us?" Natalie said. She seemed utterly surprised. Ian was as well, just a bit, they hadn't planned for her to agree after all. That was Part 1 of the plan that was now shot down. It shouldn't ruin the rest of the plan, though now they did have a rather large cage that would go unused. Shame, Ian had been looking forward to testing out it's silencing functions.

Amalienne nodded. "I can't get married, I'm too young."

"You're of age, everyone in the galaxy knows that."

Amalienne's face reddened. "I can't get married! Not yet!"

Ian held out a hand. "Whoa there, Merida," he cursed Elizabeth for showing him those damn kids' movies, "we get it. Just follow us back to our ship."

Ian realized, as they were taking off, why Amalienne had agreed to come with them: they hadn't told her exactly why they needed her.

She really did want out of this marriage.


End file.
